


our bodies, possessed by light

by anchors (harbingers)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Getting Back Together, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29275287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harbingers/pseuds/anchors
Summary: Love is timeless, or so they used to say.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Qian Kun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	our bodies, possessed by light

  
“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.

Tell me we'll never get used to it.”

―  Richard Siken, _Crush_

The bed smells like blackberries, maybe a sliced grapefruit between the mouth, sour and acidic sweetness when sugar coats the bottom of the trunk, thumping below the wooden rail. Kun rests on the window bench of his townhouse, the purple mug resting in his hands and he feels adrift, ready to comb away from the frost at the glass building a barrier. The living room is quite empty, plates stacked in the dish rack, silver and floral white whistling when shaken, the kettle losing its heat in Lisbon’s frigid autumn. 

From below, street markets awaken at the early dawns of morning and tourists idly stroll the carts, Euro’s being exchanged for fresh rye bread, and sunlight exfoliating the soft awnings of the fish cart, and earthy scents arise and flooding Kun’s insides. Ink stains his fingers, his back feels cramped against the back wall pressed to a velvet cushion he rests against and Kun rubs the pads of his fingers senselessly. Once, between his fingers was a boy, who floated up to the sky and became a castle, giggled like a thousand wishes that praised the sun, and lived under the mounts of Lisbon’s fragmented travertine stone. 

Taeyong used to be at the wooden table, across from the bench where cherrywood runs raw and the phantom limb of the scrape of the floors when he used to pull out his chair to sit close, and the scent of iris, patchouli growing in the vase, and violet streaking the tips of his cheekbones when he drew himself together. Kun can taste the illusion, feigning the jut of his teeth, and a plate of roasted ham, and cheese croissants and dark roasted coffee with too many splashes of sweetened milk that Taeyong prefers in the morning. 

_(“You should taste it,” Taeyong suggested, wiping the butter off his lips, glistening and ripe like grapefruit smeared to the imprints of their coverlet.)_

Kun sets down the mug, keening and brewing gently in the passing of a nightmare, and he never awakens. 

  
  
  


“I thought we already packed up the kitchen belongings?” Taeyong stands in the middle of the drawing room, across from the locked doors of his study. He wears an overdrawn cardigan sweater, persian blue soft and subtle to the seeping sunlight against his grey strands escaping from around the temples of his glasses. Kun had yet to see him wear them, for several years ever since he began wearing contacts more often the lens had been tucked into a compacted box inside the drawers next to the mattress. 

Kun gently folds the kraft paper into the quartz chalices that used to sit in the see-through rows of utensils and Taeyong’s crafted kitchenware he’d bought when visiting his sister in Berlin. “It must’ve been buried at the bottom, would you like me to put them in the boxes as well?” 

Helping your ex pack up his kitchenware in the townhouse you used to share is not the among the list of things Kun had planned, and yet Taeyong stands with a hand on his hip, tousled and softer then the days remembered, playing with the nape of his neck and kissing circles into his back. Maybe, when he cries his name then Kun will be brought back to life, Merlot wine tattooing the indents of his waist, fair and slim and forever smashed to pieces in Kun’s memory. 

“It’s fine,” He insists, and so to the burning sunlight of their once shared windows, the photos stacked and buried underneath the future, and present that Kun refuses to live on. “Thank you,” Taeyong whispers, gentle like cruel remains. Kun almost has to pinch himself, when his eyes drown in the cuticles of Taeyong’s fingers, once manhandled and pulled to the tumbling resilience of his scalp. Cinnamon leaves your tongue tender, and his pupils gaze into Lisbon, the taste of failure, and the milk tea you brewed hours ago goes cold. 

“It’s no problem.” 

  
  


Kun writes poems in his spare time, he recounts the days of Taeyong, the stories of his laugh embedded into the walls of their bedroom, or when they walked along the streets, or how his eyes drowned in the sea, as he held Kun’s hand while they awed at The Lisbon Oceanarium. Some nights, he used to whisper into the shells of Taeyong’s chest, carving into the underbelly of his forebeaing moans, toes gathering the lace of their bedsheets. He would read him the poems he wrote sometimes, leaning against his shoulder, bare shoulders tumbling and his heart gave him the benefit of the doubt while he listened. 

He writes about Taeyong, standing at the riverfront square, chasing the seagulls, and begging him in his direction of bread bites. How stunning he remained to appear, no matter the way Kun gazes in whatever direction. He used to write in the present tense, but now, when the bed is empty, and the tingling remancsents of blackberry and bay leaves grow stale over the weeks they’ve separated and Taeyong rents a flat in Sintra that Kun has yet been invited to visit. 

Break-ups are supposed to hurt, antagonize his inner being and Kun deserves to write a horror story of his unbecoming and misfortunes. But instead, the words imprinted to his skin only are yearning matters that unjustly hither him closer to Taeyong’s parting. And the townhouse soon fills itself, ink turns scarlet, and rinses through the flesh of his fingers. 

Lee Taeyong, the breakable measures of his heart, met in a glass casing forever engraved into the lasting sentiment they shared. 

  
  


It’s raining, there’s a knock at the door and thunder cackles in the distance and Kun slides away from the window bench, footsteps beating the floors and he feels like a ghost passing through the sky. “Kun?”

“What are you doing here?” he asks, letting the leather journal fall to the table when he opens the door to Taeyong, jacket wet and ghostly against his bare chest as the silk he wears flattened to his stomach. Earrings catch fire, moist and twinkle and his eyes express the start of a promise, eyebrows knitted together. 

“It was raining,” he swallows, “my flat was too far from Lisbon and I remembered that our — your place was nearby the area.” 

Kun inhales, twice unfolding and reaches for Taeyong’s hand, escaping the matter at hand that broken bond is the core between them. “Would you like to come inside?” he offers.

And the splintering smile that Taeyong writes in his anthology, structures over Lisbon’s mahogany buildings, and the sunset is the smile that Kun remembers. His smile is the horizon outlining the curve of his waist, and step by step, may the wounds and fractures in his words mend over the time. And Kun himself, slowly cracks a smile, and he finally remembers that they have all the time in the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/gossamers__) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/gossamers_)
> 
> kunyong has taken over the brain and so i offer this <3


End file.
